


there were no camels in camelot

by eynn



Series: merlin crackfics set in a golden age [4]
Category: Merlin (TV)
Genre: Gen, I found this in my drafts, but it made me laugh so here you go, everyone likes merlin but . . . people, fight me on this, from a place called camelot, i don’t remember writing it, if she could have been a pirate in canon, morgana would have been lots happier, so would merlin, the INJUSTICE of being denied the camel content we deserved, which is a mood
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-11
Updated: 2019-10-11
Packaged: 2020-12-09 08:34:39
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,349
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20991938
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/eynn/pseuds/eynn
Summary: merlin discovers the terrible truth about camelot, gets away from that mushroom-smoking dragon in the woods, and makes some new friends





	there were no camels in camelot

Merlin walked into Camelot. It was busy in the lower town, but as he neared the walls of the great white castle, it became quieter. Someone was being executed.

Merlin turned around and walked out.

THERE WERE NO CAMELS. NOT ONE. HE HAD BEEN LIED TO.

His mother had assured him that there were camels. They had studied all the prophecies together. There. Would. Be. Camels.

There were no camels in Camelot.

And it looked like the man being executed was being executed for being magical, so Merlin decided he was well out of that mess. He set up a camp in the trees on the main road out of the city and stared at it judgmentally for a few days. He’d walked all the way there and wanted to rest his feet a bit before going home to report on the horrible truth he had discovered.

It was boring in the trees. There was some light squirrel and bird traffic, a few groups of bandits cruised past, and the shiny soldiers from the castle came and went down the road, probably to guard the assorted farmers who used the road from the bandits, though they didn’t seem to need it. Merlin had seen far too much in a very short time. Apparently banditry was a good trade for an enterprising and restless young fifth son of a farmer and he would bring home such nice presents for his sisters. Did those guards seriously not notice an entire tavern out here?

The entirety of Camelot seemed to be built on lies. The worst part, Merlin thought, was that no one was noticing.

On the sixth day, he felt a spark of hope return. Someone else had noticed The Lies.

He hadn’t had much to do, so he’d begun capitalizing The Lies in his head. Squirrels didn’t have much to talk about even if they could knit really fast once they learned. He’d sold so many dishcloths to people who wandered past his camp. The appeal of a squirrel-knitted and bird-foraged towel seemed to be overwhelming to the weird people in grubby tunics and badly trimmed beards. At least they were quiet and respectful and disappeared back into the forest as silently as they had come, even if they all did have the unfortunate speech impediment of constantly hissing ‘mrisssss’ under their breath.

But now he waved his assistants back to whatever it was they’d been doing before he came along and stood under a tree, grinning as he watched the show. A plumpish blond young man on a bored horse was screaming at the top of his lungs at a finely-dressed man who looked rather like a slightly plumper, slower, and greyer version of him.

“I cannot live with these lies anymore, father!” the one on the horse was screaming. Merlin nodded in appreciation. Those lungs could probably pass messages down the mountain valleys without needing an extra man stationed between the villages. “You have lied to me my entire life! About everything! About who I am and what I will become and — whatever, about all of it! No, I haven’t been down at the tavern all night, I’ve been in the vaults! I read the records and I know there have never been any camels in Camelot!”

Merlin unslumped from against his tree. A squirrel ran down the nearest branch and picked some twigs out of his hair, straightened his jacket, and rubbed some lichen off his forehead before bolting away again.

He had found an ally.

“Look, just admit that you’re a huge flaming bastard of a manipulative obsessive delusional hypocrite with some really disturbing fantasies about power and your relationship to it and let us go without making a fuss,” said a figure in armor on a horse that somehow managed to flounce out of the gate without running over either Shouty Ally, Old Man, or the numerous foot soldiers that swarmed around the pair like distressed beagles.

Merlin’s ears perked up. Two allies?

“Huh?” said Shouty Ally.

Ally-With-A-Brain slapped him upside the head with a glove. “Turns out I’m your older half-sister, I agree with everything you just said, and we’re going together.”

Shouty Ally’s voice somehow rose in both volume and pitch as he turned to screech down at Old Man. “YOU WERE TELLING ME HOW TO FLIRT WITH IT LAST NIGHT AND IT WAS MY SISTER?”

The glove was used again, but gently. “Half-sister. And yes. Gross, dad. Gross, but it explains so much.”

Old Man looked rather as if he was suffering some kind of fit. As a guard laid him down gently on the mud, the pair Merlin wanted to meet kicked their loaded horses into motion and galloped away, leaving their probable father to be gently showered in more mud and pebbles.

Eh. It was probably good for his complexion. Some of the women in Merlin’s village spent hours digging for good mud to clear their skin.

“Hi!” Merlin shouted cheerfully as they rode past, and jumped out into the road, oblivious to the hedgehog cradled against his collar and the finches making a nest in his hair. “You noticed the camel thing too? Can I come with you?”

“He’s got a bird in his hair,” Shouty Ally said urgently.

“You’ve got empty space in your head,” Awesome Brain Lady retorted. She smiled. “I’m Morgana, the twit is Arthur. Who are you?”

“Merlin!” Merlin chirped. “And yeah, birds like me. I like birds. Everything likes me, except most people. That’s why I really wanted to help build Camelot into a great city. But I can’t do that without any CAMELS! Whoa, sorry.”

Shouty Ally Arthur grabbed his arm and yanked him up onto his horse behind him. “We’ll get you a horse when we find a decent one. Got any bags, kid?”

“I’m older than you are,” Merlin protested absently. “Probably, I don’t know. In spirit, definitely. No, it’s all in my Pocket.”

Morgana and Arthur exchanged glances and then stared at Merlin. Arthur had to twist around in a beautiful display of athletics and dislocated spine to do that, so Merlin gave him an encouraging and appreciative thumbs-up.

“I can hear the capital letter on Pocket,” Morgana said. “And I can’t help but notice that what you’re wearing doesn’t really have any.”

“Nah,” said Merlin, and stuck his hand into the air above his right hip and pulled out a jacket. He shrugged it over his shoulders and smiled winningly at Arthur’s nose, which was so close to his face he went a little cross-eyed. “Don’t need cloth ones, got magic instead. Actually, this old dragon who lives in the woods told me I was made of magic, but I think he might eat the mushrooms or something because he says a lot of weird stuff. Should we go before those guards catch up?”

Morgana kicked her horse into a sprint and grabbed the reins of Arthur’s too. “I can light fires with my mind!” she screamed back. “Oh, and foresee the future. Can you teach me the pocket thing?”

“Sure!” Merlin screamed back, grinning and enjoying the wind in his face. Arthur was slumped over the horse’s neck and banging his head against the pommel of the saddle for some reason. Merlin tapped his shoulder gingerly. “You ok, buddy?”

“Why not?” Arthur screamed, adding his voice to the chorus. “I’ve spent the first twenty years of my life surround by not-sorcerers and they all screwed me over! Let’s try sorcerers for twenty years and see if that works out better!”

They eventually made it to North Africa, founded a small kingdom on the shores of the sea, and became very successful sea and land pirates.

There were camels everywhere.

Even indoors.

Merlin turned out to have a flair for genetics and bred the first family lines of what would come to be known as the Penny Small Golden Camel-Dragon.

It sneezed fire, but only when it was distracted, and the fires were really very small and weak. It is a very popular breed for small children and ladies.

**Author's Note:**

> the idea for the Pocket came from the fic A Brand New Start by faewm. go read it, it’s amazing.


End file.
